


How Am I Going to Be An Octopus About This

by Michelle_A_Emerlind



Series: A Story to Suck You In (i.e. Octopus!Rick) [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead - All Media Types
Genre: Explicit Language, Graphic Depictions of (Funny) Violence, Humor, M/M, No shame, Octopus, RAGE!OCTOPUS, Season 5 Spoilers, Try, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 19:56:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3622287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelle_A_Emerlind/pseuds/Michelle_A_Emerlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Humor/Crack Fic. At the end of "Try," Rick turns into a rage octopus. Literally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Am I Going to Be An Octopus About This

**Author's Note:**

> Have you ever heard of a rage octopus? Like you're so mad you start flailing about and it seems like you have eight arms of pure anger? Yeah. I took it literally.
> 
> Want to see what Daryl looks like as an octopus? [See the cover Skari made me!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3628734)

“Things don’t get better because you want them to,” Rick growled, getting progressively redder and redder by the second. “Starting right now, we have to live in the real world.” Rick sneered at Deanna, waving his gun around madly, his arms starting to move fast and furious. “We have to control who lives here,” Rick said, his face the color of apples.

“That’s never been more clear to me than it is right now,” Deanna said, her voice hard.

Rick laughs and makes a little “plub” sound. Behind him, Maggie snaps her hands to her mouth in horror. “Me? _Me_? You,” he laughs low and gurgling. “You mean _me_? YOU MEAN ME?” And then he’s flying around into an absolute rage, his whole body shaking and then with a harsh little POOF! and a curtain of smoke, Rick turns into a cherry red, wailing and flailing octopus.

“PLUB-ABUBABUB!” Rick yells out, waving all eight tentacles at a million miles an hour, his octopus eyes squinted shut in the throes of anger.

“Oh _SHIT_ ,” Glenn says. “Not again.”

***

When Daryl and Aaron enter the gates after their expedition, Daryl sees a group of people gathered around a spectacle, their backs blocking what they are all staring in horror at. Carol looks up and sees him and rushes forward, grabbing his shoulder and steering him away from the crowd. “ _Daryl_ ,” she hisses in concern.

Daryl takes one look at her--her wide frightened eyes, her stiff shoulders, the looks she’s giving him that speaks of pity and distress. “Fuck,” Daryl says. “What’d he do?”

Carol bites her lip and Aaron looks confused between the two of them.

“He,” Carol starts. “He got angry. And he--”

“Let me guess,” Daryl cuts in. “Did he start punching things?”

Carol nods. “Yes.”

“Did he start punching people?”

“Yes,” Carol says, nodding her head again.

“Does he have blood on his face?”

“Yes,” Carol says and sighs. “But Daryl, he--”

“Jesus and Hitler. Carol is he an octopus?”

“Octo--” Aaron starts.

“ _Yes_ ,” Carol says and bends forward, her hand on her mouth like she’s trying to hold her crying in.

“Motherfucker. This is _just_ like the prison,” Daryl says and storms off.

Aaron stands there blinking. “Octopus?”

***

“PLUB-ABUBABU!!!” Rick is still yelling when Daryl approaches the group, Rick’s tentacles waving in the air and slashing through it like butter trying to churn cream.

“Don’t get too close!” Glenn is warning everyone, “If he comes at you, run! He’s a fast little fucker.”

Deanna is just standing off to the side, blinking rapidly and seems unable to process the octopus now starting to slap at Pete’s unconscious body.

“Holy fuckery,” Daryl mutters under his breath and slips through the crowd.

“We should try to calm him down,” Deanna says and takes a step forward and the prison gang all react in the same way, that is to step in front of Rick and yell “NO!” in a chorus of horror.

“He’ll slap you,” Carl says, his voice little and wavering. “There was this guy...Jim...he didn’t make it…”

Deanna looks between all of their honest faces and then slowly nods. “What...what do we do?”

Glenn takes a deep breath. “There’s nothing to do. You don’t stop this without going through this. He has to let it all out. Just let Daryl take care of him. He knows what to do.”

Daryl nods and walks forward to where Rick is currently leaving sucker wounds all over Pete’s stomach. “Rick?” he asks and Rick whirls around, four tentacles poised in the air ready for popping. “Hey, buddy,” Daryl says and Rick flies into a series of very complicated sounds.

“Worba plub de blu TE PLE bluadua de blu blu BLU BLU PLUB ABUBABU!!!!!!” Rick points angrily at Pete and then starts slapping him again for good measure.

“Alright, alright,” Daryl says, “I get it. He’s an ass who attacked you and Deanna was being a bitch. Come here.” Daryl reaches down and scoops up Rick under his body and holds Rick out in front of him. “You think you over-reacted _just a little_?”

“POU!” Rick says angrily.

“Just a _little_?” Daryl asks again.

Rick sighs and his body deflates, the tension going out of his skin until he’s just a pile of mush in Daryl’s hand, his tentacles hanging off the sides of Daryl’s hand and arm loosely. Rick takes two of his tentacles and makes a shrug. “Mublu?”

“Just maybe?”

Rick rolls his octopus eyes and then slaps weakly at Daryl’s bicep. “UB.”

“That’s right, yes.”

Deanna sighs in relief and comes forward. “I am so glad we got that settled.” She reaches out and touches the side of Rick’s body and Daryl takes in a hard breath just as Rick reacts, screeching in a series of “p”s and “b”s. His tentacle comes down whiplash hard on Deanna’s arm, slapping out with the wet sound of sucker hitting flesh and Deanna cries out, clutching her hand to her body.

“I TOLD YOU!” Glenn calls.

“...ow,” Deanna says. “I think he broke my wrist.”

Daryl, for his part, just shrugs and carries his octopus away.

***

“I don’t understand why we’re doing this,” Daryl says, sitting on the couch of Deanna’s house, the video camera in front of him.

“I want to record this for posterity's sake,” Deanna says, her newly bandaged wrist laying across her lap. “I’ve never met a man who turns into a--”

A loud crashing sound interrupts them, covered up quickly by the squishy little noises Rick makes when he slides across the kitchen tile. They wait and then pick up their conversation.

“--octopus. Tell me about it.”

CRASH!

“Well,” Daryl says, “the first time was at the quarry, I guess. We were all shocked. But you get used to it. But man, have we been through some experiences…”

***

“There was this time,” Maggie says, crying into the camera. “My dad, he...he ate the last of the strawberries. The very last of them and Rick...we couldn’t get the tentacle off...he...we had to amputate his _leg_.”

***

“It was at night,” Carl says later in his own interview. “I came into the field and my dad...he was arguing with his best friend. Shane. They were just yelling at each other and then POOF! Both of them. Two angry...red...squirming... _octopuses_. They slapped at each other. Deanna...my dad slapped him to death.” Carl pauses and takes the tissue when Deanna offers it. “Have you ever seen a zombie octopus? _Because I have_.”

***

Michonne grunts. “Until six months ago, I never understood the term ‘sucker punched.’”

***

“It was at the church,” Gabriel tells Deanna, unable to meet her eyes. “These three men had come to hurt us. It was so dark and I was watching from the side room. There was this sound. Just this sound...suckers on wood. I could just hear it. Pit-a-pattering across the slats. And then out of nowhere, this OCTOPUS. He had...he had...a _machete_. In _each tentacle_. And then...oh, then, he started _spinning_. Like a merry-go-round of _doom_. ...that’s the night I knew I had seen the devil.”

***

Daryl grunts. “He blotted a man to death. Ink blotted him right in the throat. Broke his neck.” Daryl shakes his head and another crashing sound happens from the kitchen. “And then there was this one time, with this man named the governor.” Daryl shakes his head. “We were trying to negotiate, but he just poofed, you know? Stood up on the table and started plubbing along and then he just started smacking the guy. Left, right. Left right. Left, right. He took out his eye. His motherfucking eye---” CRASH!

Deanna sighs. “Does he _have_ to break all my cups?”

Daryl shrugs. “That or someone’s face.”

***

As Daryl fills the tub up with lukewarm water, Rick sits on his head, his tentacles hanging down around Daryl’s ears and his face like an extra set of hair. Daryl moves around the bathroom perfectly content and unaffected, as if he’s done this a lot and let’s face it. He totally has.

He remembers the prison when Rick climbed up his head--that day when they’d run into the prisoners and Rick had decided he needed to kill the crazy guy. He thinks there’s nothing quite like the memory he has of a man being strangled to death by tentacles that are hanging off of his own scalp.

This is so much better, though. This is one of the good times because Rick hasn’t killed anyone today--just beat the shit out of Pete, snapped Deanna’s wrist, and tackled a girl wearing pink to the ground, yelling in plubby language that she was offending his eyes. So...a good day. Daryl smiles at Rick in the mirror and when the tub is full, he plops Rick into it and watches as Rick floats on the surface, his tentacles splayed around him like a spider’s.

Daryl can feel the end coming and he’s happy. Rick starts to splash around and makes little plubbing noises of contentedness.

“You okay, now?” Daryl asks, leaning against the counter. “Gonna stop being a psycho?”

Rick looks up at him and then narrows his octopus eyes. He starts to splash harder, throwing water in Daryl’s direction. Daryl spits and sputters until Rick stops and smiles happily at himself, going back to swimming and splashing.

“Good,” Daryl says and wipes the water off his face. “I’m going to go get something to eat while you calm down.”

He starts to stand up, but Rick yells “POU!” at him hard and then climbs up onto one of the shower ledges. He points at the water with his tentacle. “Mupadoab? Yu? Op wabu?” He points at Daryl, and then at the water again.

“Me in the water? Want me to take a bath with you?” Daryl rolls his eyes. “No thanks, Rick.”

Rick starts spinning his tentacles in anger and flops back down into the water, slamming his suckers home so hard that Daryl feels like he’s just signed up for a waterpark ride. “OKAY, OKAY!” he yells and starts undressing because he’s soaking wet, anyway. He sighs and slips into the water.

Rick “plubs” in happiness and swims over to him, sticking himself to Daryl’s chest. He wraps two tentacles around Daryl’s neck like an embrace and lays his squishy red head against Daryl’s chest. He sighs and closes his eyes, deflated in joy.

Daryl smiles. “So I think you owe Deanna about twenty glasses.”

Rick snaps his eyes open and then whips out and smacks Daryl’s nose so hard the sound echoes in the bathroom.

“JESUS!” Daryl calls out and slaps his hand to his throbbing nose. But then with one last POOF! it’s no longer an octopus curled around his chest, but a very human and very happy Rick all snuggled up next to him in the bath. Daryl smiles and can’t find it in himself to be angry.

Rick starts sliding his hands all over Daryl’s body and Daryl grins to himself at Rick’s roaming hands, swearing he has eight.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Covers for "How Am I Going to Be An Octopus About This" and "Suckers for Happy Endings"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628734) by [SkariCovers (skarlatha)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/pseuds/SkariCovers)




End file.
